As the
Director of Education in the UK, Ian leads our work with schools, colleges,
universities and other learning organisations across the UK. He is also a Mayor
of London Technology Ambassador & Advisory Board member of Edtech UK.
There’s a huge amount of new technology being created each year,
and as a bonus a lot of this technology is becoming more accessible quicker,
easier, and is cheaper than ever.
However, with a widening digital skills gap looming in the
economy and more demand for impactful tech, it’s important that we implement
these tools within schools from primary level, all the way to higher education
and beyond into work and lifelong learning.
Young people entering school today will face challenges in the
future that we can’t imagine. Therefore, we need to prepare not only their
digital knowledge, but their soft skills that are integral to being part of a
collaborative society. According to our research with Mckinsey into the ‘Class
of 2030’ up to 40% of future jobs willrequire more social and emotional skills.
According to the research, students also want personalised
learning. This means that for the future, there is an important role for the
human and personal to work alongside technology – so teaching will get the
benefits of automation but not be fundamentally disrupted by it. By using
technology, teachers can not only leverage tools that help create personalised
learning for every student, but also free up their own time to focus on
planning, sharing learning with their peers and reducing their workload.
Big data, big results
In the era of the AI revolution it’s not only businesses that
can leverage big data. Education practitioners can also use their own data to
predict test results, track students’ progress, and identify students who mightbe at risk or early drop out.
Why is this a good thing? By building systems that can identify
and predict student performance, teachers can spot a student struggling or
those who are starting to struggle and provide them with the real time support
they need. They can also spot weak points in the curriculum or courses that may
need improvements based on feedback or student attendance records.
Jonathan Bishop, Headteacher at Broadclyst Community Primary School has
already seen results.
“Using the data that is taken in online test scores saves them
[teachers] all the time of manually analysing children’s progress,” he says.
“All these digital tools are really supporting the teacher in assessing,
planning, marking, and tracking progress of children through their schoolwork.”
New approaches to learning
While we can expect the future of learning to include
technological advances like AI, it’s primary purpose will be to augment
learning, not take over from teachers. 98 percent of studentsperform better with personalised learning approaches and by
using technology we can help students without overloading teachers.
Personalised learning has been a holy grail for education – yet
it has taken to time to come to fruition. Creating personalised content and
pathways for students is vitally important, meaning they can work in class at
their own speed with the teacher acting as a facilitator for each student,
helping them on their journey.
In Marlow, the Danesfield School made
educational technology and personalised learning and professional development a
key part of their school improvement strategy. Three years ago, they were in
the bottom 10% for reading, writing, and mathematics. After two years of their
‘technology first’ approach, they now sit in the top 1 percent nationally.
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